…Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real “whistleblower” in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He’s the one who warned Time’s Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson’s credibility. He’s the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn’t a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

“Thank you, Mr. Rove” is taking things a bit too far for my tastes.

Even if Rove didn’t give out Valerie Plame’s name (which appears, for now, to be the case), it also looks like he pointed a pretty bold arrow her way. That kind of leak is breaking the rules, and that’s a bad thing.

Now, as I understand the law regarding intelligence officers, Karl Rove didn’t do anything illegal. But was he right to leak? Or was he to be, as the WSF editors did, to be congratulated? My gut tells me no on both counts.

As a practical matter, leaking classified information has usually been treated as a matter of discretion for higher-ups – and Rove’s actions might fall under that historical leeway.

Even if Plame wasn’t covered by the law, and even if her husband was a lying ass, and even if Rove was acting within the tradition discretion accorded someone in his position… Rove’s leak – at the very least – sent a bad message to other intelligence officers: “Toe the line or we’ll out you.”

Well, I don’t see how that kind of thing can be good for “company” business.

“The truth will out,” it’s said – and the WSJ argues that Rove merely helped it along. But do we really want the truth outed in intelligence matters? No matter the political cost, aren’t these things best handled quietly if only for the peace of mind of other, better agents?

Finally, my thoughts come down to this. Republicans have complained since 1975 that Congress gutted our human intelligence — and it’s a fair cop. Between Congressional meddling and Clinton rule-making, Republicans are right when they say our human intelligence resources have been gutted. But those complaints seem less justified – and more hypocritical – when a high-ranking Republican treats an agent’s identity with anything less than perfect circumspection.

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1.
rosignol

Even if Plame wasn’t covered by the law, and even if her husband was a lying ass, and even if Rove was acting within the tradition discretion accorded someone in his position… Rove’s leak – at the very least – sent a bad message to other intelligence officers: “Toe the line or we’ll out you.”

The impression I got was a little different- from my POV, the message was closer to “If you suspect spouse might be a lying ass, ask them not to prove it in the editorial pages of the New York Times”.

1. Ms. Plame is not now a “covert operative” of the CIA
2. It appears to be dubious that she ever was in a covert position
3. She has been identified for years in her husband’s resume as a CIA Officer/Analyst
4. When Robert Novak called the CIA regarding her status, they confirmed her employment, which they NEVER do with respect to covert personnel.
5. She is listed as a CIA Analyst in “Who’s Who in America.”

Stephen 9 times out of 10 you would be right, but there is a two tiered game going on with this case and the Farm asking for a criminal matter to be investigated(as a test case IMHO since it has been levied ONE time)

1) The Farm was engaging in some serious and ethically troubling partisan games, leaking and such and is likely wanting to “keep that new power”

2) they desperately want the pre-Church Commission days back and a successful nailing of the “leak” regarding a “covert” agent who wasn’t would mean SERIOUS shielding for a legit blackbag guy/gal.

I think I’m with the host on this one. It looks like Rove wasn’t trying to bury Plame, but he was damned reckless with sensitive info and that is not cool if you work in the White House.

The only thing that can save Rove’s a## is if Plame’s undercover status turns out to be an open-secret or if Plame and her douchebag of a husband really were up to something shady. The first possibility remains open, from what I have read (correct me if I am wrong) but the second possibility, which seems to be the assumption the WSJ is working on, seems pretty remote.

The fact that Wilson was shady doesn’t square the deal in my book. We know he was full of it but who cares, he wasn’t CIA. However if the ‘pubs can show that Wilson and Plame were up to no good then we are going to see some good old fashioned dirty politics.

This doesn’t bode well for peace, love, and understanding in the District this summer.

One last thing, you know who could really score some huge points with this- Hillary Clinton. If she comes out and tells everyone to tone it down until we get all the facts- she’ll make a whole lot of new friends.

Plame is a Demo political operative employed by the CIA analogous to the current scandal in Canada. I can’t believe she could find her ass with either hand as a spy or a WMD expert. She isn’t acting like she is in danger. If she really was a good spook she should know. President Bush threatened her job by invading Iraq and confronting North Korea and Iran.
She has kids to put through college and an old man for a husband.

1. See comments above about Ms. Plame being listed in Who’s Who as a CIA analyst.

2. I haven’t seen any evidence anywhere that she was ever a covert operative – and with two small kids, I bet it certainly wasn’t within the last five years.

3. The quote from Miller’s e-mail has Rove saying “apparently” Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA – which strongly suggests that a) Rove wasn’t sure, and b) Miller got her confirmation from somewhere else.

4. Wilson was so upset about this that he and his wife posed for Vanity Fair and joked about who’d play her in the movie.

5. Since Andrea Mitchell admitted on MSNBC that it was an open secret that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, why is this a story at all?

6. Because the MSM will do just about anything to get the Bush White House, that’s why.

Hilail Gildin writes: “Andrea Mitchell was asked, on MSNBC, whether it was generally known to news people, before the hullabaloo, that Ms. Plame worked for the CIA. She answered, somewhat reluctantly, that it was. In the light of this, I don’t understand the ensuing fuss.”

I would agree with what you said, however there is no evidence that Rove knew that Plame was a covert agent (and even that is not clear). If Rove did not know her status within the CIA, then all he was doing was playing politics in trying to discredit Wilson.

I’m with the mob here, and the mob says Steve’s wrong on this one. I’d be more polite and say he’s willfully trying to be middle-of-the-road for unknown reasons.

Rove didn’t do anything wrong, so far as I can tell, and I’m not a Rove fan or a Rove anti-fan. I’m a Rove agnostic.

But the mere fact that the MSM couldn’t make up it’s mind about the whole Plame affair until Rove became involved points me in the direction of not believing the MSM accounts.

After all: the MSM wanted the government to force the government to reveal the source of the leak to the MSM, when the MSM already knew who the leak was and could have reported it. This whole non-issue is so far outside the realm of importance that you have to wonder why Steve felt the need to address it.

2 relevant points
1) Rove and Cooper talked on July 11 (IIRC), the same day Novak’s column went over the wire. If they talked after it went out, then her name was already out there, no harm no foul. If they talked before, then that looks shadier.
2) The conversation was on background (“double secret background”). I’m not sure what exactly that entails, but I’m pretty sure it’s “off the record.” Not for publication. Just giving a reporter a direction to look into.

And what about all those photos of Plame in Vanity Fair? She dressed up like a spy for the camera, but it seems her desk job was not the spy dream job she fantasized about.

I think Plame and Wilson love all the attention. He got to sip tea and sell his book of lies, and Plame got to dress up and play spy for the Vanity Fair. and now? – the DNC/MSM get to slime Rove with half-truths. The lies of the left far out-weight the revelation of Plame’s desk job at the CIA.

Rove is not the story. Bush is the story. The Dems and the MSM will do ANYTHING to get at this administration. This is another of those endless, breathless media “events” that the old media try to blow up into a real “story”. It will disappear when the SCOTUS nominees are named. The White House should simply refuse to comment on it and let the old press stew in it’s own irrelevance.

I tend to agree with Vodkapundit. I can only imagine how Rush, Hannity etal would react if this information had been released by a Clinton official. My thought – no crime but certainly bad move in time of war.

I read that Rove was fired by Bush, Sr. in 1992 for leaking information to Novak. True?

Plame and Wilson both sought to undermine the administration’s policy. I suspect that Plame had a much more active role than just recommending Wilson for that “fact-finding” trip to Niger. She may very well have been the source of various MSM leaks of the “senior CIA analysts dispute the administration’s conclusions” type.

Having worked as an analyst for Naval Intelligence in the DC area, I’ve always thought that this whole “scandal” was manufactured out of a illogical decision by the CIA to use a (previously) covert agent as an analyst in a subject area (WMD proliferation), with the expectation that her cover would remain intact. In Washington DC –You must be kidding! To be effective, an analyst needs to be known, by a wide number of people, as the subject matter expert in the area they are working. To remain covert, the absolute minimum number of people must know who you really are. There’s a fundamental contradiction in the two functions that can’t be resolved. If the CIA thought they could make good use of Valarie Plame, WMD analyst, and still maintain the covert status of Valarie Plame, Field Agent, they’re dumber than I thought.

Also, remember there’s a difference between a clearance for classified information, and the official access to the information. People may have a high security clearance, but will still not have access to information that doesn’t relate to their current job. This is tyhe principle of “need to know”. I’m willing to bet that there were a large number of people in the DC area who had both the clearance and the access to WMD information, knew of Plame (by sight if not by name), and who also attended the same social gatherings as Wilson/Plame. Very few of these would have had the need to know of Plame’s past assignment, and they would not have been told. Everything I’ve seen indicates that Plame’s CIA attachment, as a WMD analyst, was pretty common knowledge among Washington insiders. Since the employment of the vast majority of CIA analysists isn’t classified, why would anyone assume that there was a security issue about this one? You can’t “out” someone who’s identity isn’t classified, and if you don’t have official access to the information that she had been covert, you’re never told that it’s classified. Dollars to doughnuts, the leakers (whoever they all are) had no access to Plame’s prior covert status, only knew about her through her WMD work and social contacts, and had no idea that they were “outing” anyone who was not already widely known as a CIA employee.

I think Judith Miller’s contacts within the CIA are numerous. In the run up to the war, she was frequently on Fox News talking about WMD, and was considered an “expert”. There is more to this story than meets the eye, so far. Let’s wait for the investigation to end before we hang anybody.

I think the NYT, among others, are going to come out of this with egg their faces. And I don’t think it will be Karl Rove.

It’s amazing, really: nearly two years down the road, all these facts, all this speculation, and the rights and wrongs of this story still turn largely on the same questions that were at issue from the beginning:

1. How recently was Plame involved in covert activities?

2. Were any such activities still subject to being disrupted by disclosure of her identity?

3. How secret or non-secret was her covert past?

4. Of the various people who were involved in “outing” Plame – including Wilson, Rove and Novak, at a minimum – what did they know about #1-3, and when did they know it?

I just don’t think we know enough, even now, to have the kind of confident judgments about this case that everyone seems to be airing. Because there’s no harm in “outing” a CIA employee, only a covert agent.

By the way, check out today’s lead NYTimes editorial, which is remarkably dishonest even by Gail Collins’ standards.

But it is something else entirely when officials peddle disinformation for propaganda purposes or to harm a political adversary. And Karl Rove seems to have been playing that unsavory game with the C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson IV, a career diplomat who ran afoul of President Bush’s efforts to justify the invasion of Iraq. An e-mail note provided by Time magazine to the federal prosecutor investigating the case shows that Mr. Rove’s aim in talking about Ms. Wilson to Matthew Cooper, a Time reporter, was to discredit Mr. Wilson, perhaps to punish him.

What the editorial doesn’t mention is that Wilson is the person who was peddling lies, in the NYTimes no less, and that he was aided and abetted by a faction within the CIA, which includes Plame, that sought to undermine and sabotage the Administration’s policy. That is gross misconduct and borderline treason if you ask me.

This, I think, is the heart of the situation: for ideological/partisan reasons, the NYTimes and a faction within the CIA was peddling lies in order to subvert the Administration’s policy. The NYTimes is just pissed that they got caught.

The whole thing is such a load of convoluted crap that I’ve been trying to ignore it as best I can, but lately it seems to come up everywhere.

The very first question that needs to be answered, before proceeding to any other is, “Was Plame a covert operative at the time of the leak?” No other question matters until this one is answered. And it seems a simple question that should get an easy yes or no answer. Yet two years later we still don’t know.

Why?

Next, while Rove may have been innocently trying to correct one of Wilson’s many lies by pointing out that he was merely a nepotism appointment, it seems to me the proper course would have been to stay quiet, take the lumps, and fire Plame for being so irresponsible in recommending hubby in the first place.

It’s called taking responsibility for what your people do–whether or not you do it personally is unimportant.

We KNOW that she wasn’t covert at the time of the leak. She was already a married mother riding a desk and attending D.C. social functions on Wilson’s arm, doubtless receiving the kind of distateful trophy-spy-wife praise I heard Wilson spouting across the media since the day of his op-ed. Wilson rewrote history to misrepresent the causative facts (his wife, not Tenet or Cheney) and findings (possible yellowcake sales) of his Niger trip, the latter which were controverted independently by British intelliegence.

Plame was never mentioned by name by Rove during an off-the-record comment resulting from Matt Cooper’s call, not a journalist-shopping witch hunt by Rove. Saying some person works for the CIA isn’t outing them since the majority of employees work in roles that are not undercover and Plame’s employer seemed to be common knowledge among social and press cricles. Rove authorized absolute transparency for Cooper to share information with the prosecutor (let’s get into that waste of $ later)and the reporter’s own notes show that Rove wasn’t naming anyone, merely providing an explanation as to why to consider that source with a grain of salt. I wish Cooper had heeded the warning.
I adore the punditry of the Vodka, but can’t follow the twist of your rabbit hole today.

I have to disagree with you on this one. Personally, I don’t think that Rove did anything illegal or unethical.
Plame was known as a WMD analyst, I am willing to bet she was never covert and if she was, it was a long time ago.

He (Rove) certainly didn’t do anything to merit the current media feeding frenzy. Hell, this is getting more play than the London bobmings investigation.

Moving away from the facts, which seem to be on Rove’s side, just look at the coverage this has recieved in contrast to the coverage that Berger’s escapades last year recieved. Is their any doubt that the democrats and their allies in the MSM are generating way more heat than this sad episode merits?

The MSM has had an axe to grind against Bush, his administration and the Republicans since day one. They have tried on numerous occassions to tar ths administration with scandals. None have gotten any traction until now.

However, the sad truth is that most Americans don’t care. If they’re at all informed, they are aware that Wilson & Plame are dem party hacks and that they were out to deliberately damage this administration with false accusations during and election year.
Furthermore, Wilson and Plame weren’t very concerned about her so called cover until there was political hay to be made.

This is a tempest in a teapot and when al of the facts are out, it’s the MSM that will come away with even more damage to itself.

As Powerline, Hugh Hewitt and the entire mechanism of the GOP has been saying for the last several days, the MSM, getting it wrong as usual, is failing to see the true illegalities in this story. The real crime is in the details the MSM is leaving out…

With what we know currently, what Rove did pales beside what Berger did. Which is why I said what I said. As a Marine, it has always seriously pissed me off that Berger got off with significantly less than a slap on the wrist. I have a clearance, and I know what would happen to me if I tried to do what he did.
It pisses me off that the White House press corps is acting like a pack of rabid, feral dogs on the scent of a bitch in heat, when Berger’s utterly blatant law breaking rated a short blip on the collective scope of the MSM. The man, IIRC, plea bargins his into a fine, yet if he is called upon to work in another Democratic White House in the future, you can bet your six that he’ll get pardoned, and have access to those types of documents again.
If accused of being somewhat fixated on Berger, I’ll be the first to admit it, but I just do not understand why what he did didn’t rate some serious time in orange coveralls. Though admittedly smaller in scope, in my book, what he did ranks right down there with Benedict Arnold.

Your point about the Dept of State trying to embarrass the White House is well taken. I wonder, seeing as how the CIA is a para-military orgainzation, what say we include it under the authority of the UCMJ. I don’t hesitate to say that it might clear up the blatant politics pretty quickly. Just a thought.

The leak of a CIA operative’s name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

What about the unrelated leaks that compromised current CIA covert ops? Those appeared on the front page of the NY Times.

Well, anything that embarrasses the President is good for the MSM. You want to see messups…look at the conduct of WW II. There were more mistakes there to shake a stick at; but at least the government did not have to deal with a hostile and disloyal press.

Finally, if the NY Times is trying to protect Judith Miller’s source, and if that source is Rove, why is the NY Times trashing him? Very curious.

I agree that if Plame was no longer covert, and her CIA job was well known, then this is much ado about nothing.

However, I remember when this first happened, how incensed Bush was. He indicated that the leaker would be found and punished, and as I recall even had some choice “names” for whoever did this. So why was he upset, unless this revelation really was inappropriate and/or damaging?

Also, I absolutely agree that it is ridiculous that we don’t have answers to some very, very basic questions so long after this happened.

I should also say that folks arguing that this is all because of the Bush-hating MSM would take this into account:

the exact same MSM sat on this story for two years, through an election cycle, while in possession of all the relevant facts about Rove. If this is just a symptom of opportunistic Bush hatred, it’s highly inefficient.

Ted, the reason that many people have “convinced themselves” that Valerie Plame was not an undercover operative is that, by any rational assessment, she was in fact not an undercover operative, regardless of what the CIA claimed at the time or claims now.

Polishing a turd doesn’t make it any less of a turd. Knowledge of Plame’s identity and employment was widespread in DC. It was a non-secret. The woman was not covert, notwithstanding the semantic games that the CIA and you in the so-called “reality-based community” insist on playing.

I really don’t think that I’m playing semantic games; I feel as though I can point to the words and actions of the FBI, the prosecutor, and Bush’s own White House.

You say that knowledge was widespread. How do you know that? Tone is difficult, so please know that I’m not trying to be disrespectful. I just haven’t seen any evidence other than second, third and fourth generation assertions that “everyone” knew.

Are there any other covert agents whose identities are widely known? For example, do you know of any? And if everyone knew, why did Rove have to point it out at all, let alone on double-secret background?

Okay, so I'm sitting here laying out a brochure and I have a problem: too much information, too few pages. If I extend to another page, I'll have a page with barely any information on it at all, if I don't, I'll have a page that&…

As the Wall Street Journal attempts to make Rove into some sort of Deep Throat type hero and the left finally gets its chance to call someone a traitor, let’s take a step back and look at what really happened here.

Stephen is dead on about putting covert sources at risk. Which is why Rove is in the wrong. It’s why Wilson and Plame are also in the wrong. If you need to keep your identity secret, you don’t send your husband to run office errands and take the risk that someone will wonder who sent him. And you don’t write about the job you did for your secret agent wife in the New York Times.

There’s another problem here. Valerie Plame and others surely believed we were making a mistake in Iraq and needed to be stopped. So did lots of other people. But being in government service doesn’t make you the government. By using her position to send her husband on a mission to discredit her elected and congressionally confirmed bosses, Valerie Plame attempted to substitute her judgment for American democratic processes.

The New York Times played along with the farce, suggesting the administration was hiding something because a government investigator disagreed with the CIA director’s intelligence assessments. Had the story been, “disgruntled CIA employee’s husband says she’s right, her boss is wrong,” this story would have played differently than when it was implied that Cheney, Tenet or somebody else at the top level had signed off on his investigation.

We rely on the CIA to get us sensitive information. We ask them to do dangerous things to do so. And we entrust them with special protections for so doing. But that carries a certain amount of responsibility. It carries the responsibility, among other things, to be sensitive to the direction set by the elected leaders of this country. Because if they aren’t allowed to set the direction, then we, the people, who elect them have no control over who does so.

Rove is wrong in that Plame did not deserve to be outed as a covert agent. She deserved to be fired for abusing her position to undermine the policies of the elected leaders of our country.

Had the administration fired Plame outright for sending her husband on a mission her bosses didn’t sanction, instead of Rove just trying to deflate Wilson’s story, though, would those now incensed have been supportive?

But… her bosses did sanction it. Literally. All Plame did was suggest her husband; her bosses are the ones who sent Wilson.

You ask if Rove’s current critics would have been supportive if Plame had been fired instead of exposed. But if she had been fired, we wouldn’t know. No agents would have been burned, and no security assets would have been put at risk. There’s a world of difference in terms of harm.

You believe that Plame should be fired because she used her position to go the President’s agenda. We’ll probably have to agree to disagree on that, although I can see how you’d come to that conclusion.

My concern is that that I don’t see how rank-and-file CIA agents can protect themselves from such a charge without compromising the integrity of their analysis. Forget about Plame and Wilson for a moment. If any other analyst writes a report that isn’t congruent with the rhetoric and objectives of the Administration of the day, can she expect to be fired with cause for “substituting her judgment for American democratic processes”? For “abusing her position to undermine the policies of the elected leaders of our country”? What if he or she recommend someone else, and that person doesn’t toe the line? Apparently people are supposed to police the ideological correctness of every employee they recommend. If CIA managment thought like this, it seems like a sure way to produce only analysis that administrators already want to hear.

surf-actant, first let me thank you for your service to our country. Second let me apologize for not realizing you were being sarcastic, but posters say the most outrageous things in apparent seriousness and one of left’s favorite ploys, moral equivalency, really sends me up a wall.

Using s/on & s/off bothers me because it’s so precious, but perhaps before responding in the future, I’ll start off with the caveat “if you weren’t serious, ignore this post.”

Does anyone think the media will wake up anytime soon and realize what they’re doing. They were oh so horrified by the silly pranks at Abu Gharib, yet pictures of decapitations and twisted bodies of dead children murdered by terrorist bombs, don’t seem to put them off their feed even a little bit.

Plame was brought back from overseas in the 90s because she was possibly compromised by Aldrich Ames. Her CIA association was well known on the DC cocktail party circuit — as Sandy P points out above, Judith Miller knew Plame was CIA by the late 1990s. Furthermore, Plame travelled frequently to Langley prior to 2003, and by February 2003 her name was listed in Ambassador Wilson’s on-line biography.

Notwithstanding tedious recitals from the Friends Of Val™ and the kids at TPM, the simple fact of the matter is that there is no way — none — that anybody can honestly claim that Plame was “covert” in any meaningful sense of the word by June 2003. It simply was not so.

So the answer to your question — why have so many people convinced themselves that Plame was not covert — is that to pretend that she was covert is to self-identify as an intellectual charlatan.

When Rove spoke to Cooper way back when, it was under condition that it never be printed, it was solely for the purpose of preventing a bogus story from being printed. He only came forward to cooperate with the investigation the NY Times demanded but is still obstructing. If Rove’s motive was to punish Plame, he would not have insisted it did not be printed. There’s no way he could have had the motive they’re accusing him of. Even outing a field operative just that far would be wrong but there’s no reason for anyone not drunk on DNC Koolaid to think that’s what happened. If a CIA field operative appears in Vanity Fair, she’s either not a field op or so incompetent that she needs not to be. Wilson’s bogus story and the damage it did to the approval of the war on Iraq was just as harmful to War on Terror than the loss of one field op would be, so even if that’s what happened (and it surely is not) then it’s defensible as breaking an egg to make an omelet. Judith Miller must have another source, another source that the NYT doesn’t want known because it wouldn’t be good for their image. This is nothing more than the Media becoming part of the DNC wanting to talk about a non scandal scandal on Rove than the terrorist attack in England.

Outing Plame (if that is, indeed, what happened) shouldn’t have even been necessary to discredit Wilson. Here’s The Man himself in the NYT:

“I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country’s uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.”

Uh, so he asked nicely “anything going on here we should worry about” of a bunch of people who would be up to their eyeballs in s*** if they knew about uranium sales to Iraq and weren’t raising cain over it, and they said no, so everything is a-okay? This is the report on which our belief that no yellowcake sales to Iraq took place is supposed to rest? You’ve got to be kidding. Wilson discredits his own report. Who gives a rip who is wife is – he’s provided no compelling evidence in support of his conclusion!

Later: “Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own.”

Translation:

Wilson – I don’t know about any yellowcake sales to Iraq. Do you?

Ambassador – Nope. I don’t know about any either.

Wilson – Alright then . . . American people, Iraq has no Nigerian uranium! I mean, I don’t know about it, and our ambassador to Niger doesn’t know about it, so it must not exist.

. . . months pass . . .

British intelligence – Iraq bought Nigerian yellowcake!

Wilson – No they didn’t! I didn’t know about it, so it must not have happened!

People bloviating pseudo-knowledgeably about matters with which they yet have very, very, few facts to work with is what the entire news industry/blogosphere depends on. There are perhaps a half-dozen people, if that, who really know what happened here, but that won’t stop a few million people from speaking in thundering certitudes. “I don’t know” never garnered many page hits or sold any advertising. So it goes….

What a distraction! This whole Plame business is a non-issue. An “off the cuff” remark by Rove fanned into a forest fire by democrats and their willing media pals. Liberals are searching for an “iran-contra” to discredit the Bush legacy…nothing more.

You’re right but you are in the minority as a “loyal opposition” telling the administration that they are wrong in a certain instance. The President’s enemies are blowing this thing way out of proportion and his supporters are reacting in the same extreme. The sad thing is that there is very little “loyal opposition” from the left. It seems to me that they are willing to hurt our country in order to hurt the President.

Chuck, I have no idea whether that was meant as an insult. If it was, I’ll plead guilty to asserting factual knowledge on matters in which I really have little; it is a fault that nearly all of us are guilty of from time to time. I do try to avoid it, however, and I think this story in particular is one in which people of all stripes are pretending to “know” things which they cannot possibly know as a matter of fact.

fascinating thread if for no other reason that to see so many convincing and contradicting arguments. My gut tells me that this has been overblown but I have no patience for any compromise of national security or intelligence. I’ve been infuriated too many times when politicians have mishandled classified information for their political needs.

My knee is jerking all over the place.

If Plame wasn’t undercover, or whatever the correct term, then it is a simple matter that will be resolved by a quick look at an easily accessed file. I don’t understand why this file hasn’t been pulled already, or maybe it has by the investigators.

In fact there are many unanswered questions that make it impossible for me to confidently offer an objective opinion that doesn’t involve my ass.

I guess I just have to be patient and let the rest of you figure this out.

Stephen, I think you are wrong and Rosignol correct. Wilson and Plame put themselves deliberately into the political light to undermine the Administration. Rove’s actions were surprisingly mild given their own actions.

You simply cannot look at Rove’s actions without the context of the wilful dishonest political manipulation that Wilson/Plame were engaged upon. Wilson/Plame cannot themselves operate politically and then pull the cloak of faux innocent whistleblower over themselves.

Issichoff publishes Cooper’s emil to his Time magazine editor in Newsweek and that is no story?

Look to Wilson for the leak. His wife had twins, he was retired and she was working… What better way to get the liddle woman home with full pension & benefits WHERE SHE BELONGS-! Besides he had a book to peddle and who was gonna take care of twins?

Such little imagination. When facts no longer matter then whoever frames the scenario wins. Appearance is reality. Where have we heard this before?

For all the talk about “bloviating”, the *fact* of the matter remains that though there has been much talk about how her “not-undercover” status was “well-known” prior to the Novak outing, not a *single* primary source has been posted to document this. No link to a document stating that Plame was a CIA employee of any sort (hint: Plame’s name in Wilson’s “who’s who” entry as his wife does not reveal that she’s CIA). No article mentioning her job status. Not a single item. NADA. You’ll pardon me if I find the “she was not undercover” statements not credible absent such evidence, particularly when there are CIA officials specifically stating that she *was* undercover.

Even if she was *no longer* under NOC cover (Plame claims she was transitioning to OC under State), the fact that she *had been* (NOC is the deepest sort cover, and she had used Brewster-Jennings, a CIA front company) means that revealing her status compromises *any other operatives* using the same cover, as well as *any assets* with whom it was known that she had contact under said cover. This is not rocket science.

And Chuck’s dismissive “she knew the job was dangerous” comment about a person who risked her life in service to her country is so beneath contempt it defies belief, and I can’t believe any purported patriot would stand in his company without condemning it.

Just wanted to bring up one “minor paradox” in the media’s current “feeding frenzy” behavior about Rove and the “Plame leak” that I’ve not seen mentioned in the extensive blog commentary on the topic. While it’s only confirmation of something that “we” already know, I thought I’d pass it along in case it stimulates any ideas on your part.

First, the background assumptions:

1) Assume, as the media
does, that Plame
really was covert and
was “outed” by
a leak of classified
material.

2) Assume that Cooper’s
email, as presented
in and by the press
really does represent
the true contents of his
discussion with Rove.
(By that statement I don’t
mean to imply that
Cooper would be
intentionally
misrepresenting the
conversation, but at
least in the references
I’ve seen, the emails
are not alleged “verbatim
quotes” so some
interpretation was
inevitably made by Cooper
when he summarized the
discussion.)

Then known facts:

1) Cooper did not publish
an article based
on his discussion with
Rove.

2) IF Plame was
really “outed” it
was the result of
Novak’s column.

3) There is no
information “in the
public domain” —
at least that I’ve
seen — that proves
that Novak’s sources
are the same as
Cooper’s source.

4) There is information
in the public domain
— Novak’s second
column on the topic —
which at least “strongly
suggests” thatRove was
NOT Novak’s source,
since Novak said that
neither source was
a “partisan gunslinger”
and even those of us on
the right would have no
real argument with
describing Rove as such
a “partisan gunslinger.”

The mere fact that this essential link to the source of the “real leak” has not been made, and yet the media is jumping on the “Rove must be guilty and must have committed a serious crime” bandwagon should clearly establish that their motivation is not “truth” but an attempt to “get Rove.”

Of course many of us know that already, but I think that this aspect of their game may deserve pointing out at some point.

The primary concern appears to be that Rove’s actions put Plame in peril and could make CIA employees fear for their jobs.

Well, this concern is misplaced. The vast majority of CIA employees never see their spouses get letters to the Editor published prominently in the NY Times for the purpose of embarrassing the administration.

Most of us realize that if we (or someone closely associated with us) do something to embarrass our boss that we will get fired. Civil servants have a bit more protection than most, but also have some limitations on their freedoms (for instance, they are prohibited from engaging in certain types of political activity). Still, you do something incredibly stupid and you could get fired.

Now, did Rove do something incredibly stupid deserving termination? I don’t think so. His actions have caused embarrassment for the administration; but then, the MSM is so hostile to Rove and to the administration that ANYTHING he does is likely to bring the same shower of doom and destruction.

I know people at the CIA, some of whom are very critical about the administration’s policies. But they know that their jobs are safe because the DO their jobs and don’t go blathering to the MSM with their complaints.